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WhatsApp is a wonderful creation. It profiles us in ways only the discerning can notice. They say the way we drive; the games we play and the way we play them reveal who we are in more ways than we care to admit.
So are the things we post on our various WhatsApp platforms. It is probably because they are so instinctive.
A trick I learnt during my years of conducting personality interviews was to let my subjects do most of the talking especially on seemingly mundane things. Just hearing them talk on why they wear white and don’t wear watches or what they think of the opposite sex revealed their personalities and values more than serious questions on Nigeria or the corporate world.
This trick, this lesson, has served me well on my many platforms where I am largely a silent participant. It has allowed me to observe and to profile. There are people I have not met before but who I can now read like a book. I know those who post compulsively, never minding the trend—a sign that they hardly follow what is being posted by others. I know those who are stubborn, or argumentative or difficult to please. Many post things that suit their individual narratives whether they are true or not, so I know the rabid anti-Buharis and the vehement pro-Buharis.
I know those who never see anything good in Nigeria. I notice the incurable optimists too who look all over the world for commendable exploits of Nigerians. I also know the loud and the vain and the trivial by the things they post. Or the comment they make on the things others post. Even the times some people come online can be predictive and therefore, revealing. My advice if you do not want to become an open book to be read by friends and strangers alike, is to watch what you post.
Senator Dino Melaye has become an open book because he doesn’t watch what he posts. I am not on any platform with him but you can hardly miss his posts. Dino Melaye loves attention. I can tell from his posts. He loves histrionics. I can tell from his posts. He seeks validation. I can tell from his posts. There are other things about his persona that his posts reveal; some of them are worrisome and uncomplimentary. But because I am a professional journalist and not a shrink, I will keep further deductions to myself. However, in seeking validation the way he did by filming one of his apartments and singing about his houses in Dubai, London and America in one video while another filmed his exotic cars, Dino speaks to us and for us. Many have commented on the ‘tastelessness’ of these posts. Many have used unprintable words to describe his vulgar display of wealth and acquisitions. But, truth be told, he represents what Nigeria has become.
We put material acquisitions over and above everything else. Money validates the rich in our society however the wealth is acquired. The Church and the Mosque in Nigeria worship money and pay lip service to God. After all, you can’t run a church on Hail Mary alone to quote a priest. And you can’t fund a pastor’s profligate lifestyle by merely shouting hallelujah. A bank manager once asked Dr Kolade, an accomplished man, however you define the word, what he was doing when his colleagues were making money. All because he wanted a loan to build a small bungalow as residence.
That is the society we live in. A young woman wanted what she thought was a modest wedding, but which her father thought was lavish and unaffordable. The young woman wondered aloud that her father must the only Chief Executive of a multinational who couldn’t fund a simple wedding. That is the society we have built.
Dino Melaye speaks to those of us who think money is the prime goal in life and the good life consists of a showy display of material acquisitions. We started from the phase when our Yoruba brothers who lived in ‘IsaleEko’ packed flashy cars in front of decrepit houses and our Igbo brothers talked about the number of ‘containers at the wharf’ openly at parties to this phase when legislators and musicians purchase exotic cars as ‘assurance’ of love to their babes, and pastors need private jets to propagate the work of God. Money, and what it buys, has become our validation; our essence; our proof of success.
A rich but not so educated businessman once told his secondary school classmate who had become a university professor to ‘break his professorship down in naira and kobo.’ He was bold in his assertion because we live in a society that makes the learned professor feel he has wasted his time acquiring knowledge instead of wealth. A society which sees someone who lives within his means as a skinflint and someone who spends lavishly as a ‘bobo who is nice.’
So Dino speaks to us and for us because there is a Dino in many of us. He speaks to us in our propensity to show off. He speaks for us as a representative of the shallow existence we call life. We may not make a song on video to advertise our wealth like he did, but we seek other subtle and not so subtle ways to show we have arrived. One of it is holding parties in hard currency in exotic places around the world. We may not be as ‘senseless’ as that video of a group which used bottles and bottles of expensive champagne to wash hands, faces and heads.
But many expend a disproportionate amount on champagne and exotic drinks at weddings and burials. We may not descend as low as those who trampled on dollars at a party as if they were in an orgy. But many of us spray inordinately at parties. We feel a compulsion to display wealth as if it is the only thing which defines us. And those who choose a saner, more moderate road are derided as ‘al’owo ma j’aiye.’ He who has money but does not ‘enjoy’ life.
So before you condemn Dino outright, look at yourself and your lifestyle; then look at your financial priorities and ask if they do not define who you are and the values you portray. There just might be a Dino in the closet.
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WhatsApp is a wonderful creation. It profiles us in ways only the discerning can notice. They say the way we drive; the games we play and the way we play them reveal who we are in more ways than we care to admit.
So are the things we post on our various WhatsApp platforms. It is probably because they are so instinctive.
A trick I learnt during my years of conducting personality interviews was to let my subjects do most of the talking especially on seemingly mundane things. Just hearing them talk on why they wear white and don’t wear watches or what they think of the opposite sex revealed their personalities and values more than serious questions on Nigeria or the corporate world.
This trick, this lesson, has served me well on my many platforms where I am largely a silent participant. It has allowed me to observe and to profile. There are people I have not met before but who I can now read like a book. I know those who post compulsively, never minding the trend—a sign that they hardly follow what is being posted by others. I know those who are stubborn, or argumentative or difficult to please. Many post things that suit their individual narratives whether they are true or not, so I know the rabid anti-Buharis and the vehement pro-Buharis.
I know those who never see anything good in Nigeria. I notice the incurable optimists too who look all over the world for commendable exploits of Nigerians. I also know the loud and the vain and the trivial by the things they post. Or the comment they make on the things others post. Even the times some people come online can be predictive and therefore, revealing. My advice if you do not want to become an open book to be read by friends and strangers alike, is to watch what you post.
Senator Dino Melaye has become an open book because he doesn’t watch what he posts. I am not on any platform with him but you can hardly miss his posts. Dino Melaye loves attention. I can tell from his posts. He loves histrionics. I can tell from his posts. He seeks validation. I can tell from his posts. There are other things about his persona that his posts reveal; some of them are worrisome and uncomplimentary. But because I am a professional journalist and not a shrink, I will keep further deductions to myself. However, in seeking validation the way he did by filming one of his apartments and singing about his houses in Dubai, London and America in one video while another filmed his exotic cars, Dino speaks to us and for us. Many have commented on the ‘tastelessness’ of these posts. Many have used unprintable words to describe his vulgar display of wealth and acquisitions. But, truth be told, he represents what Nigeria has become.
We put material acquisitions over and above everything else. Money validates the rich in our society however the wealth is acquired. The Church and the Mosque in Nigeria worship money and pay lip service to God. After all, you can’t run a church on Hail Mary alone to quote a priest. And you can’t fund a pastor’s profligate lifestyle by merely shouting hallelujah. A bank manager once asked Dr Kolade, an accomplished man, however you define the word, what he was doing when his colleagues were making money. All because he wanted a loan to build a small bungalow as residence.
That is the society we live in. A young woman wanted what she thought was a modest wedding, but which her father thought was lavish and unaffordable. The young woman wondered aloud that her father must the only Chief Executive of a multinational who couldn’t fund a simple wedding. That is the society we have built.
Dino Melaye speaks to those of us who think money is the prime goal in life and the good life consists of a showy display of material acquisitions. We started from the phase when our Yoruba brothers who lived in ‘IsaleEko’ packed flashy cars in front of decrepit houses and our Igbo brothers talked about the number of ‘containers at the wharf’ openly at parties to this phase when legislators and musicians purchase exotic cars as ‘assurance’ of love to their babes, and pastors need private jets to propagate the work of God. Money, and what it buys, has become our validation; our essence; our proof of success.
A rich but not so educated businessman once told his secondary school classmate who had become a university professor to ‘break his professorship down in naira and kobo.’ He was bold in his assertion because we live in a society that makes the learned professor feel he has wasted his time acquiring knowledge instead of wealth. A society which sees someone who lives within his means as a skinflint and someone who spends lavishly as a ‘bobo who is nice.’
So Dino speaks to us and for us because there is a Dino in many of us. He speaks to us in our propensity to show off. He speaks for us as a representative of the shallow existence we call life. We may not make a song on video to advertise our wealth like he did, but we seek other subtle and not so subtle ways to show we have arrived. One of it is holding parties in hard currency in exotic places around the world. We may not be as ‘senseless’ as that video of a group which used bottles and bottles of expensive champagne to wash hands, faces and heads.
But many expend a disproportionate amount on champagne and exotic drinks at weddings and burials. We may not descend as low as those who trampled on dollars at a party as if they were in an orgy. But many of us spray inordinately at parties. We feel a compulsion to display wealth as if it is the only thing which defines us. And those who choose a saner, more moderate road are derided as ‘al’owo ma j’aiye.’ He who has money but does not ‘enjoy’ life.
So before you condemn Dino outright, look at yourself and your lifestyle; then look at your financial priorities and ask if they do not define who you are and the values you portray. There just might be a Dino in the closet.
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